Asif Khan: Top 40 Healthcare Transformers

Impossibly ambitious goals don't get more impossibly ambitious than "we want to change communications in the healthcare system." And yet Caremerge, with what it calls a cloud-based care-coordination model, is doing just that. Rather than tackling the entire system—the company isn't that ambitious—Caremerge has trained its sights on what Khan describes as "the most complex demographic": the aging population. Noting correctly that many seniors are cared for on a daily basis by numerous people—clinicians, caretakers, family members—Khan and his team have devised a solution that allows for all information and communication about an individual's care to be centralized in a single place.

An example of the type of information captured by Caremerge that often falls through the cracks elsewhere: what Khan describes as "those subtle lifestyle-type conversations, where somebody notices something that might not get to the level of 'okay, we have to call the doctor now.' " The Caremerge platform is HIPPA-compliant, so the privacy worries associated with such a system (a chatty food-service provider, anyone?) cease to be an issue. "Once a clinical event has occurred, it's too late," Khan continues. "What we're trying to do is bring everybody together to avoid clinical events in the first place.